The present invention relates generally to the field of mailing, and more particularly to a method of, and apparatus for, processing mixed weight mail pieces by a mailer for mailing by a postal facility utilizing a manifesting system to evidence payment by the mailer to the postal facility for the cost of the mailing.
The system of mail preparation utilizing postage meters has long been well known and has met with enormous commercial success. Prior to the advent of the postage meter, the only means by which payment to the then federal governmental Postal Service could be evidenced was the purchase of stamps by the mailer from the Postal Service which were affixed to mail pieces. As population, business activity and the need to communicate by mail grew rapidly in the early part of the century, the postage meter was developed to circumvent the need to affix stamps purchased from the Postal Service prior to depositing mail with a local Post Office.
The underlying theory of the postage meter is that there is a printing mechanism that can print a unique indicia on an envelope that is placed in or fed through the postage meter, the indicia having been approved and accepted by the Post Office Department, and later the United States Postal Service (USPS), as evidence of payment by a mailer for the privilege of having his mail piece carried through the mailing system. The postage meter includes any one of a number of mechanisms for accounting to the mailing facility for payment for the privilege of printing the postage indicia, typically in the form of a pre-payment system in which the accounting mechanism includes a settable register in which the postal facility, upon receipt of payment, sets to dispense a predetermined amount of money, e.g., $100.00, in varying increments. The accounting mechanism also includes a suitable lockout means which prevents operation of the postage meter when the postage credit remaining drops below the maximum amount of postage which can be printed by the postage meter, e.g., $0.99. Thus, the theory of the security of the postage meter system was that the mailer could only print postage indicia up to the amount of money which he had paid in advance to have his meter set by the postal facility.
Again, as population increased and business activity became even more complex, and the need developed for faster and more automated systems for evidencing payment for postage, various developments were made to meet this need. One development was that postage meters were incorporated into machines that would feed a succession of envelopes at high speed to and through the postage meter, thereby creating the mailing machine, with the result that hundreds, or even thousands, of mail pieces could be processed to have postage indicia printed thereon in rapid succession in the course of an hour. During the last couple of decades, electronic postage meters gradually replaced mechanical meters, and sophisticated systems were developed by which postage meters could be reset remotely via telephone communication between a mailer's postage meter and the postal facility, thereby eliminating the inconvenience and time required for a mailer to bring his postage meter to the Post Office for resetting, with payment for the postage credit transferred to the meter being charged in advance to accounts maintained by mailers with the postal facility. With the advent of more sophisticated electronic technology, it became possible to combine an electronic postage meter and an electronic scale into an integral unit, so that mail pieces could be weighed "on the fly" as they moved through a mailing machine, and the meter would automatically be set to print a postage indicia showing the appropriate amount of postage. Such machines permitted still further increases in the speed, and therefore the volume in a given period of time, at which mail could be processed for mailing.
The problem that still persisted throughout the development of postage meters and high speed mailing machines that included postage meters was that they were ideally suited only for handling large quantities of identical or similar sized mail, e.g., standard No. 10 business envelopes and other closely sized envelopes. These machines could not readily handle, if even at all, a succession of mixed mail pieces that varied greatly in size or weight, and could not handle packages at all. Some of the more complex and costly mailing machines included the capability of printing postage indicia on a finite length of a web or tape, typically tape that was gummed on one surface so that it could be moistened, and was then severed from the web and applied manually to a package. Thus, in the case of a high volume mailer who generates mixed mail consisting of greatly mixed sized envelopes and packages, the only method of processing such material for mailing was to apply postage stamps to the mail pieces or utilize mailing machines having the capability of printing postage indicia on discrete lengths of tape and applying the tape directly to the oversized envelopes or packages.
The latter procedure required that an operator manually weigh each piece of mail on a scale to determine the correct amount of postage, enter that amount into a postage meter which would dispense a strip of tape with the postage indicia printed thereon, and then apply the trip of tape to the envelope or package. It is apparent that such a procedure is slow and cumbersome, and does not lend itself readily to high speed and high volume mailing.
A partial solution to this problem, as disclosed and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,787,046, issued Nov. 22, 1988 to Feinland et al, and assigned to the assignee of this application, was to combine a postage meter with an electronic scale in such a manner that the postage meter is mounted on the scale and becomes part of the tare weight of the scale, which then controls the operation of the postage meter in accordance with the weight of mail piece fed through the postage meter, or placed on top of the postage meter if it is too thick to be fed through the postage meter. This system was highly efficient in terms of handling small quantities of mail, but it was cumbersome and slow, and did not lend itself to high speed, high volume mixed size mailing applications.
A further partial solution to this problem is the manifesting system as disclosed and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,001,648, issued Mar. 19, 1991 to Baker, in which a succession of mixed weight and size mail pieces are weighed to determine the amount of postage that is required, and a unique number is printed for and on each mail piece, and by utilizing suitable computer techniques, a manifest is created which associates mailing charges for each mail piece with the unique number assigned to that mail piece. By suitable computer techniques, and under appropriate procedural safeguards to ensure accuracy and prevent fraud, the manifest is printed out and is accepted by the postal facility as evidence of payment by the mailer for the postage covered by the manifest. Although the theory behind the manifesting system as disclosed in the patent was sound, the implementation of that theory contained several procedural deficiencies and equipment design problems, such as cumbersome and time consuming manual handling of mail and multiple opportunities for error, which resulted in overall little improvement in the speed and efficiency in handling mixed size and weight mail over what was currently available.
Thus, prior to the present invention, there remained a need for a mail handling system based on the theory of the manifesting system as approved and accepted by the USPS which would represent a significant improvement in the speed and efficiency of handling large quantities of mail pieces of mixed size and weight, and which would enable both high volume mailers and the postal facility to solve problems experienced with currently available equipment and systems.